


If It's Too Much To Ask, Then Send Me A Son

by starsandgraces



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-04
Updated: 2011-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-18 23:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgraces/pseuds/starsandgraces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winona's done this before, but not on her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If It's Too Much To Ask, Then Send Me A Son

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [where_no_woman](http://where-no-woman.livejournal.com/)'s Mother's Day fest, for the prompt: _Winona's first night at home alone post-Kelvin with a baby Jim who won't stop crying._ Title taken from 'The Suburbs' by Arcade Fire.

It takes them over a month and a half (fifty-one days, Winona thinks, though the first week or so was made hazy by grief and exhaustion) to get back to Earth after the destruction of the _Kelvin_. Once there, it's more than another month of interviews and debriefings. Between all that and a newborn baby, Winona can't remember the last time she was by herself. She's grateful for Haf's companionship, of course, but for what feels like the first time in her life, Winona just wants to be alone with her thoughts.

And maybe the ghost of her dead husband, too.

Eventually, though, the brass has no more use for her in San Francisco, and they give her permission to go back to Iowa with Jim. Haf is staying—she's already been assigned to another research vessel—but she comes with Winona to the hangar to say goodbye.

"I can come and help if you need me," Haf says.

"You seem to have forgotten that this isn't my first time doing this."

Haf places one hand on Winona's shoulder gently, her large, expressive eyes saying what her mouth doesn't need to: _It is on your own_.

"Anyway," Winona continues, "I've got my mom and dad, and George's mom and dad. Plenty of support already in Riverside." Her voice doesn't wobble when she says George's name. It's a small victory, but she'll take it.

"Then don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it. You look as if you haven't slept in months."

Winona ignores the first part. "I barely have," she says, wrapping her arms around her friend.

They hug each other for a long time before the yeoman holding Jim asks Winona to board the shuttlecraft.

It takes them to the front door of the house. Winona supposes that's just what happens when your husband dies saving hundreds of people and becomes a hero of the Federation in the process. She doesn't believe it's because she just had a baby, and if she thought that was the reason, she'd have refused to get on in the first place.

A different yeoman helps Winona carry her few personal belongings into the house and then leaves them. She hears the shuttlecraft taking off again, and within a minute the sound of its thrusters have faded to nothing.

For the first time since his birth almost three months before, Winona is truly alone with Jim. She lifts him up and looks into his tiny face. Jim regards her sleepily.

Winona sighs. "Go easy on me," she says. "I'm a little out of practise."

With hindsight, that may have been inviting trouble.

Jim is the very model of a perfect child for the first forty-five minutes, and then he starts crying. He cries so much that Winona can hardly get him to latch on when she tries to feed him, and he continues to snuffle tearfully around her nipple when she eventually manages. He calms down a little during his bath, reduced to whimpery sobs, but he begins to scream in earnest when she dresses him in clean clothes and puts him to bed.

After almost fifteen minutes it becomes clear that Jim won't stop crying any time soon, so Winona goes back into the nursery to comfort him. She picks him up and cradles him against her, pacing the room and hoping that the motion alone might calm him down. It doesn't, so Winona racks her memory for the words to _any_ nursery rhyme.

She ends up singing a slightly confused mixture of about five different nursery rhymes to Jim and humming to fill in the gaps as she walks back and forth. Every time Jim looks like he might be ready to settle, it turns out that he's just catching his breath for another bout of howling. Winona's glad that Sam's still with her parents. At least someone's getting some sleep tonight.

Winona decides she should comm Haf and ask her to bring sedatives. Not for Jim, of course. Winona knows that would be terrible of her. But Haf can sedate her and look after the baby while she sleeps. Jim howls again, as if he knows what she's considering and doesn't approve.

The seconds tick by agonisingly slowly. Winona stops looking at the chronometer because it only makes the time pass more slowly, but she knows that it must be long past midnight. Jim is dry, clean, fed, in her arms, and still he cries. She cries too—for longer than she'd care to admit—from tiredness and frustration and just having run out of ideas.

Then she thinks, _George would know what to do_. But George is space debris on the edge of Klingon territory and there's nothing he can do to help her now. Unless...

"Please shut up," Winona says in the nicest, happiest voice she can muster. It doesn't have any effect, but she hadn't expected it would, so she carries Jim outside and straps him into the baby seat in the car. George set it up before they left, just as he had before Sam was born—only last time, he came back to take Sam for his first drive, while Winona waited at home anxiously, convinced that the stupid internal combustion engine was going to kill them both. Now, it's the only option she has left, or at least the only one that doesn't involve admitting defeat and asking for help.

The car hasn't been driven since _before_ , but it has three-quarters of a tank of gas and the engine turns over easily. She used to tease George that the car was as much his child as Sam.

Now, Winona supposes, it's hers.

The clutch is stiff and she makes a mental note to fix it when she has the time. For now, she pulls the car out onto the road and just _drives_. Before she knows it, they're more than halfway to what's left of Des Moines and Jim... Jim is fast asleep. Whether it was the steady vibration of the engine or just an inability to fight his tiredness any more, she can't say. As for her, she's past tiredness.

"Not happy in Riverside, Jimmy T?" Winona asks, reaching out to brush her fingertips over the soft blond fuzz on his scalp. "I guess you already take after me. I couldn't wait to get away, but not your dad. He can't—couldn't wait to come back."

Jim doesn't answer, because he's sleeping—and a baby, besides—but for the first time, Winona feels right talking about it. She talks until they reach the ruins of Des Moines, and keeps talking when she turns the car around and drives back to the east. Things that she'd almost forgotten come rushing out of her in a torrent, and Winona knows that she doesn't want to forget them again. If they make Jim sleep better than nursery rhymes, so much the better.

She stops the car by the edge of the spent quarry on the outskirts of town and opens the roof, looking up. The dawn is coming and the stars are already fading.

"It's not so bad, Riverside," Winona says. For the sake of herself and her sons, she has to believe it.


End file.
